8/30/2021

After showing some signs of strength during the overnight session with corn and soybeans trading higher, both quickly turned negative after 8:30am morning open in what can be best described as a risk-off type day.  Quite often, a lack of market news is treated as a negative and today saw corn and soybeans drift down to the bottom-side of their 6-7 week trading ranges.  The USDA confirmed another sale at 8am this morning with 256,000 tonnes (about 9.4 million bushels) of soybeans to China for the 2021/2022 marketing year.  Over the weekend, a large majority of the grain belt received plentiful crop-finishing rains with 3"+ in some parts of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska.  It's probably more than what this year's crop needs but the drought monitor tells us it will be beneficial for the 2022 crop.  After 7-10 days of good rains in the heartland, it will be interesting to see how/if the drought monitor changes this week.  Demand will be a bigger factor going forward than what we have for supply.  In the first year of a price rally, demand is typically not an issue.  Going into a second year of sustained higher prices, end-users and buyers start searching for cheaper alternatives.  New crop 2022 futures have retraced back much closer to their contract highs than what the 2021 crop futures have been able to.  It warrants taking a look at locking in some of these price levels.